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Colleen Shogan, the 11th archivist of the United States, visited the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library Wednesday afternoon and spoke to about 30 Rackham Graduate School students about her professional journey and how the archivist profession has changed over time.
Shogan first discussed her career path, noting her start as a political scientist. She emphasized the unpredictability of her career and how her role as a professor at George Mason University led to an internship on Capitol Hill, which then led to jobs in the Senate, the Library of Congress and the White House Historical Association. Those roles eventually resulted in her accepting a position as head of the National Archives and Records Administration.
“I’d actually taken all those steps but I never had put it in my head that it was going to lead me to actually run a federal agency,” Shogan said. “But that’s the great part about your career that you have ahead of you, that sometimes these opportunities will be in front of you and you’ve taken those steps to prepare and then you’re ready to really take that leap and that plunge.”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Rackham student Peyton Rundell said hearing about Shogan’s personal experience made her optimistic about her own future.
“Hearing how it was all this series of incidental things, where she just kept pursuing what she was interested in only to find herself in this totally unexpected place decades down the line, it definitely offered some sort of comfort as a grad student who knows that the path isn’t always clear, especially when it comes to jobs and funding,” Rundell said.
Shogan also mentioned talking with University President Santa Ono about increasing student involvement and collaboration with the Ford Library.
“I was with your president, President Ono, earlier this afternoon,” Shogan said. “We had a terrific conversation with myself and the director of the Ford Library, Brooke Clement, and we’re cooking up a whole bunch of different ways in which the University of Michigan community can be more integrated with what’s going on at the Ford Library and vice versa.”
As the National Archives works toward digitizing all of its records, Shogan said archivists may have to start using artificial intelligence to find and sort through billions of documents in the archives.
“We’re going to have to use artificial intelligence in order to help us search for records that are available because there’s just going to be way too much information to be able to do on the scale that we’re doing right now,” Shogan said.
Rackham student Katie Chamberlin told The Daily she was curious about the ways AI could be implemented into the archives.
“I was also really interested in (how) she’s talking about bringing AI into the archive,” Chamberlin said. “There can be good things with that obviously — that there’s more accessibility — but also potential pitfalls. I’d also be interested in how that AI would work and maybe potential environmental impacts and things like that.”
In an interview with The Daily before the event, Shogan spoke about the steps she is taking to expand access to presidential libraries. Right now, she is focusing on digitizing documents to increase their accessibility.
“So we’ve talked a lot about digitization and why that’s important because digitization is really democratization of access,” Shogan said. “By digitizing, we’re really equalizing the ability of access so that people, no matter what their endpoint is — whether you’re a student, whether you’re someone who’s just interested in the Ford presidency — you can examine those records.”
The Rotunda, the room in the National Archives Research Center that houses original copies of the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, is an example of an already popular tourist site that is being updated to draw in even greater audiences, according to Shogan. She said these updates will allow a wider variety of documents to be featured in the archives.
“We’re adding the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment to the Rotunda in 2026, adding new cases to add those documents because we want to tell a more complete American history,” Shogan said. “So once again, the people that come to see us, Americans that come to see us, they’re able to see their history reflected in their own personal past and how they view themselves as Americans.”
As the first woman to permanently hold the position as head of the NARA, Shogan discussed the lack of female leadership within libraries, archives and museums.
“If you look at a library or look at a museum or an archive, there’s probably more women working there than men,” Shogan said. “That’s been a professional field that has been women-dominated for many, many years. However, up until recently — the past five to 10 years or so — there haven’t been many women who have run museums, archives, galleries and libraries. So there have been women working there, but they haven’t been in leadership or the ones actually leading the institutions.”
Shogan also discussed a broader trend toward more diverse leadership within archival, library and museum institutions, saying she believes this increased representation will have a positive impact on people interested in pursuing a career in history.
“I’m really proud to be part of that renaissance of women and people from various diverse backgrounds who are now leading a lot of these institutions: myself, Carla Hayden at the Library of Congress, who is the first woman (and) the first African American to lead the Library of Congress, (and) Secretary Lonnie Bunch, … the first African American to lead the Smithsonian,” Shogan said. “We collectively present a better future for people who are interested in history-related fields, who are interested in working in this sector. Yes, we want people from all kinds of backgrounds to come work there, but you, too, can be a leader in this field. You, too, can, if you work in this field, become someone that runs one of these institutions.”
Daily Staff Reporter Isabel Hopson can be reached at ihopson@umich.edu.
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